Update on the SID/MIDI/whatever box

Weeell, here’s the update. I have been working on this project for exactly 2 weeks now… The software end of things anyways.

Since last time, the PCB has been fully assembled, all the hardware has been debugged/tested/working except the USB part (been lazy on that). Been a whirlwind week of SD cards and FAT file systems and LCD displays!

As it stands, it will boot any SD card I stuff into it, load the firmware off the card into RAM, then run it. The firmware right now can load/display the directory of the card, lets you step through it including subdirs, etc and then load/play SID tunes.

You’d think sorting a directory list would be fairly easy- I spent more time than I want to admit on that piece of code. The unit can load up to 1023 directory entries off the card and then sort/display then in just a few seconds. Most directories are pretty much instantanious. I figured 1000+ entries would be more than good enough for this project. Who will wanna hit “page down” 200 times to see all 1000 files? hehe.

I made a custom font last night that allows me to cram 5 lines of text on the LCD, with kearning so that the text is packed in nice and close without wasting pixels. It can show about 30-40 characters on a line this way.

Also I bought one of those $30 CVS “one time use” camcorders and made it a bit more than one time use by making up a cable and then unlocking it. For more info on the CVS camera thing, check out HERE.

I will include a pic or two some time about my cable I made. Anyways, I mention the videocamera because I used it to make a small video of me looking and sounding like an idiot describing the device 🙂 You can watch me make a fool of myself on Youtube: